June is officially ‘Youth Month’ and so provides occasion for sundry commentators and analysts to lament the situation of young people and speculate upon the dire consequences which their impoverishment holds for future social stability. Likewise, politicians usually choose this time to announce their plans on how best society could alleviate their plight. In this spirit, in this presentation a proposal that could potentially address a range of problems which beset young people including poverty, inequality, unemployment and perceived frustration and despair caused by lack of economic opportunities will be put forward. Specifically, it will be argued that the conditional manner in which slaves were emancipated at the Cape in 1834 raised the obligation on the state to ensure that members of formerly oppressed groups are integrated into the economic mainstream. This obligation will be used as the basis upon which to motivate for the award of a four-year stipend to black young people. After describing the programme, potential difficulties will be identified and discussed. The presentation will conclude with final thoughts on how lessons drawn from one of the darkest chapters in our history could be used to illuminate the economic futures of young people and all South Africans.

 

Speaker Bio: 

 

Gerard Boyce is an economist who holds a PhD in the area of Behavioral Economics. He is currently employed as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He harbours a wide variety of professional interests, ranging from the effect of psychosocial variables such as hope and perceptions of racial hierarchy on economic attitudes to the inter-relationship between environmental factors and outlook/future orientation.